Shiv Kant Tripathi, who filed a case of fraud against Amar Singh, his wife and Amitabh Bachchan last week, had performed a month-long yagna before the Lok Sabha elections to propitiate gods to make BSP supremo Mayawati the Prime Minister.

"No one had asked me to perform the yagna, it was my sixth sense which told me that Mayawati had all that it takes to be the Prime Minister. Therefore, I performed the yagna," said Tripathi, who claims to be a priest.

Tripathi claimed he had sought no BSP aid for the yagna. "I have never been a member of BSP or any other party, and the case against Amar Singh is not politically motivated," he added.

Local BSP leaders said they had never heard about Tripathi until he shot into the limelight last week. "I have never seen him, or met him," said Salim Ahmed, BSP leader in charge of Kanpur Lok Sabha constituency. Similar was the reaction of Sukhda Mishra, the BSP's Lok Sabha candidate.

In 1994-95, Tripathi was associated with Congress MLC Jagendra Swaroop, but his association with the Congress was short-lived. Swaroop said he removed Tripathi when he started getting complaints of misuse of his local area development fund.

Sources in the state government said the registration of the FIR on the night of October 15 took top officials at the police headquarters and in the Chief Minister's Office by surprise.

“We first heard of it when the media started making inquiries'', said a senior officer.

... contd.